Advice on building Catalyst Racks

[MattMills]

Hello all, I am slowly getting together all my stuff to put together 2 Catalyst racks and hopefully 2 more by the new year. I have a few questions and I hope someone has some solutions or good options for me. In each rack I am thinking about having a Mac Pro as the main computer and having a good beefed up Mac Mini as a backup. Is it possible to have some sort of USB A-B switch so that both machines in the rack could use the same dongle? For example, if main machine went down, the user could switch to the Mac Mini backup and switch the dongle over to the Mac Mini. Im trying to come up with a nice way to pull this off without having to invest in a dongle for a back up machine. But, I would like to somehow make the transition from Main to Back up as quick and seamless as possible. What do you guys think? Anyone have any suggestions for this? Thanks for any help, Matt

[Mr_P]

Matt

Theres no way of sharing the dongle while catalyst is running... you would have to start catalyst on the mac-mini AFTER switching the dongle.

One dongle = One software licence!

There are a number of KVM and USB switched that support USB devices, including a dongle. However its not a good idea because catalyst will revert to 'demo' mode if the dongle is removed - which could happen in a KVM scenario...

If you want a LIVE backup - you need a 2nd software licence dongle...

Out of interest - how many users loose macs during their shows...
Am I just lucky?

Simon

[ajmaudio]

Out of interest - how many users loose macs during their shows...
Am I just lucky?

Ours have been solid.... stay on top of software etc ... keep em on filtered battery backup... they seem to do quite well